Landlocked Lighthouse (Locked House Hauntings Book 1)

by Mixi J Applebottom

  The island in this kitchen would have fit at least eight people comfortably. The kitchen itself was a long, skinny L shape around the giant island. There was so much counter space I practically wanted to cry from delight. Cookies, cakes, fudge, and everything else would happen here. The oven had six burners and two large doors to bake with. I carefully tested each one and everything worked except the far back right corner burner. My stomach sank when I realized I didn’t see a fridge. That was not going to be easy for me to haul from the garage.

  Finally, I wiped down each of the dark black cabinets. There was barely any dust inside, but I did find a picture. In this picture, the kitchen was bustling full of activity. A chef, complete with a chef’s hat, was in the midst of flipping a pancake high into the air. Two sweet children, a boy and a girl, watched enthusiastically. The girl was sitting on the island, clapping her hands. The boy was standing with his arms raised high, cheering the chef along. I set the picture on the island.

  The next cabinet I opened had gold-rimmed dishes. Dishes that were probably worth some money. My heart skipped a beat. I quickly opened all the cabinets in a whirlwind of excitement. Some of the cabinets were not, in fact, cabinets at all. They were fakes. One was a dishwasher, and to my great relief, the other was a fridge and freezer. Fantastic! I also found a handful of pans, and a full drawer of solid silver silverware. The silverware was a peculiar shape, the spoons were all diamond-shaped, and the forks had bulky handles shaped like lions. The knives had big, jagged teeth. I couldn’t help but grin. This place was spectacular. I closed up the dishes and it struck me that I likely had the pan in the picture. I looked at the picture of the chef again noting the gold-rimmed plates and the odd-shaped silverware. The pan though, I opened the cupboard and looked at the picture, then looked in the cupboard.

  There it was, I felt so sure of it. It was that same smooth, round shape with the curved downwards handle. With my two children and a proper chef’s hat we could recreate the picture. I had no idea why that amused me so much.

  I turned the picture over as I was about to set it down and paused. On the back of the picture was a drawing of the lions. Two of them. Between them were the words, “Emblem of undying courage, and hence that of a valiant warrior.”

  Beneath the lions was scrawled in red ink, “The last known picture.”

  The last known picture; that sounded like someone in this picture had died. This was the last known picture of one of these three. The girl? The boy? The chef?

  Or worse, what if it was all of them?

  I turned the picture around thoughtfully and wondered what it might mean.

  6

  Tony and Annabelle got up full of sunshine and delight. They giggled, they grinned. They were whispering and dancing. I had finished cleaning the dark cabinets and the glossy cream-colored counter tops. The kitchen was ready to cook us food. I walked past the caterer’s kitchen through the large dining hall and into the foyer. Our rumpled blankets lay in the center of the lions crested onto the floor.

  I almost picked them up but instead left them. In the garage, our things looked so little. Three massive spaces for cars and all I had was three stacked mattresses, three dressers, and a little dining room table. I couldn’t fit a couch in our old house so we sat on some cushions on the floor. I was not sure where those cushions went, it seemed like they had vanished. The kids’ toys and my few books were packed in five little boxes piled on top of each other. Somehow, everything was dusty already. I had two large boxes of gardening supplies. Where were my boxes of kitchen stuff? I thought I had three. One with plates and silverwares and spoons and what not. One with glasses and bowls, and one for pots and pans and my great-grandmother’s casserole dish.

  Four, I realized. Four boxes. That final box had the food, or rather, what was left of it. Flour, oatmeal, and a handful of spices. Ramen, lots of ramen. Ramen is what the poor people eat when they are too poor to even travel to the soup kitchen. That’s what my great-grandmother felt of the stuff. Cheap crappy noodles. A whole dollar’s worth could feed us for a week.

  And really, I had spent my last and final cash I had buying this ridiculous house.

  I could feel a wave of terror crawling up me like ten thousand spiders. It might be fine to ride a horse and cart out here in the country, but to ride it to town? Nothing could be more shameful. I had no working truck. Even if I took that dumb mare to town I would have to beg like a proper pauper, or perhaps have the children hunt for coins in the parking lots.

  I clenched my fists and bit my tongue, holding back the scorching hot words that wanted to bubble out of me. Life was so unfair. I wanted to stop fussing and worrying over food! It broke my heart to think of empty bellies; my empty belly, theirs too. Where was Husband? How dare he leave us! We needed him. I needed the help, the help to shoulder the unrelenting weight of it all.

  I closed my eyes and counted slowly down from ten. The box had to be here. The little box of food to help us wait until payday. I carefully opened each box. Two gardening, check. Five boxes of toys and books, check. It occurred to me that maybe they had been put in one of the dressers. Excitedly, I yanked each drawer open, only to be greeted with stale, worn out clothes. I closed them back up again and sat on the ground and bawled like a big old baby who didn’t get her way.

  Big, fat, wet tears crawled from my tired eyes down my nose, dripping in tiny dots on the dusty floor. We weren’t gonna make it even the first week. As I sat there sobbing my weary heart out, two tiny children came skipping along. They were singing, and between them was my great-grandmother’s casserole dish with the blue roses filled to overflowing with strawberries. The berries slopped out the sides and the children were covered in juice already.

  “Mama! Why are you crying? Come eat some berries!” Annabelle slowed her skipping at the sight of my face. Her tiny three-year-old face staring up at my sobbing one.

  Tony struggled to keep his end of the dish straight, strawberry juice still dripping off his chin. “Come eat!” I burst forth new tears of relief. Strawberries might get dull after a week, but if there were berries perhaps there were some other old garden treasures waiting for hungry mouths.

  “Don’t cry, Mama.” Annabelle frowned. “Don’t you like strawberries?”

  “I love them very much.” I took a handful, and we sat on that dusty floor and ate till we exploded.

  “Let’s go see this garden.” I took their hands, leaving the blue roses dish sitting on a dresser.

  7

  It’s strange sometimes how children see the world differently than grown-ups. Where the children saw a giant strawberry patch, I saw something else entirely. This was a garden. Zucchini, tomatoes, even a rogue blueberry plant gone wild. There were fruit trees, though I couldn’t have told you which yet. They had small, round bulbs on them that would turn into… apples or pears or something different. I wouldn’t know, I had never successfully grown a fruit tree.

  The strawberries were wild. They had crawled over the paths and into every single garden bed. They were swallowing the tomato and zucchini plants. They had marched an unrelenting war, crawling over plants and suffocating anything that held still long enough. I quickly ripped into the ones that were choking the tomatoes and zucchini. Then I freed the cucumbers, and I noticed beans crawling up a little shade wall. The more I looked, the more I found; onions poking up through berries, even a few heads of garlic. This was a feast. If this garden grew so plentiful with no attention I could not imagine how much it would grow if I tended it.

  Once my excitement waned, I felt this creepy sensation like I was being stared at. The hairs on my neck rose to the occasion, and the longer I stood there the more certain I felt. I started peering between plants looking for the monster in the garden. A strawberry plant tripped me. On the ground I found a gargoyle. I freed him from his strawberry captors and his eyes made me shudder. He was just a short rock fellow, squatted down and frowning but his eyes were shiny, distorted mirrors. I was reflected in them, and in
his eyes I was wearing a red lined keyhole heart shape in the collar of my white dress.

  Tony screamed with delight and ran over. “I love this rock man! He looks like he is in a rock band! I am gonna put him in my room!” He grabbed the little gargoyle and then yelped. A tiny drop of blood from his finger ran down across the gargoyle’s shiny eye. I swear for a second the statue grinned, but as I looked closer, his face had the same frozen frown. In his remaining shiny eye, I stared at my dirty, tear streaks that still tracked down my face from my earlier sobbing. Dirt was smeared on my forehead, and I was in that plain yellow shirt I had slept in. I must have imagined the dress.

  I picked a few zucchini and wished there was a stick of butter to fry them with, but ah well, they’d cook up. The three of us went back to the house, and I rinsed them off and set them in the empty fridge. Lunch.

  I washed my face quickly in the sink and Annabelle said, “Where is the bathroom Mama? I am tired of peeing outside.” It struck me that I still hadn’t seen the bedrooms or a bathroom at all.

  “Let’s go find one!” We walked back to the foyer. Standing on the lion crest I looked around. There were the stairs, the route through the dining hall on the right that went to the kitchen (past the caterer’s kitchen). A grand massive hallway stood straight ahead. To the left was a large set of wooden doors with carved lambs. I felt like I had just noticed these things for the first time, but it made no sense. Surely I had seen them earlier. How many days have we been here?

  The ceiling in the foyer was large and tall and painted. Gargoyles adorned it; they all seemed to be in the midst of a mighty battle, knives drawn as they crawled across each other in the ceiling. The one in the center had a devilish smile and hung his arms straight down with a sword pointed to the floor. The sword had a chain on the end that connected to the chandelier. Clever.

  I took a few steps to see the gargoyles on the other side of the room. It became obvious to me that these were not paintings, but they were in fact actual carved gargoyles. I don’t know how long I got lost looking at them but Annabelle grabbed my hand and started to tug on me. I realized that only half of the gargoyles had the mirror eyes the same as the one in the garden. The others…

  But before I got a good look Annabelle tugged harder. “Mama! I have to pee NOW.” I picked her up and rushed to the wooden doors on the left of the foyer. We crashed into the room and I grabbed the handle to the door directly to the right and set her on the toilet. She peed, that terrified look on her face finally relaxed.

  “Mama, wow, you found the bathroom fast.” Tony said. I did, didn’t I? I didn’t even recall looking for it. I just ran her to it as if I already had known. I stood slowly. This bathroom wasn’t very large, a toilet, shower and sink. Over the sink was a mirror. On top of the mirror was a large mirrored-eyed gargoyle.

  I turned to look at Tony standing in the large room and I realized this was a bedroom. A furnished bedroom. The bed was wooden and had a carved lamb on the large mahogany headboard. It seemed there were lions everywhere so far but this room had a lamb. Tony declared this room his, and Annabelle, who had finished talking to a man about a horse, complained that she also wanted this room. Before I told them that there could be better, and more interesting rooms we had yet to find, they shook on it and declared they would share it.

  The bed was certainly large enough for two small children, and I didn’t mind if they shared. In fact, in some ways I preferred it. Big houses had a way of making you worried when you were alone.

  I stepped out of the bathroom and was not at all surprised to see a large mahogany dresser with a lamb carved on the front. I didn’t see any gargoyles in here. Annabelle said, “Mama, where does that other door in the bathroom go?” I turned to look, and indeed there was a second door. A Jack and Jill setup perhaps? I swung open the door and I couldn’t decide if I was excited or discouraged. It led to the outside, a courtyard area. There were gorgeous wrought iron chaise lounge chairs sitting in pairs on the concrete deck. In the center of the courtyard was a large swimming pool. The pool had been drained, but it looked as though the water would run right out the pool and into a smaller pool with chairs. It took me a moment to realize the pool water was designed to flow into a hot tub.

  The kids want the Lamb room that has direct access to a pool. Great, just great.

  “Okay, guys, maybe we should pick you a different room; pools are pretty dangerous, especially empty ones.” Or full ones.

  “Why don’t you just lock this door?” Tony said. Well doesn’t he just have an answer for everything? “Besides, I don’t think I can live without the lamb! It’s so beautiful! I HAVE to have it!”

  The lambs were beautiful, so I relented. “I don’t want to catch you guys playing out here or I am gonna change your rooms. Got it?” We stepped back into the bathroom and I locked the carved door. This door had a lamb on it too.

  “Do you want me to carry your toys in here?” Annabelle grinned with excitement at my offer. I carried three of the five boxes in and told them to play and put things wherever they wanted. After all it was their room. I went further exploring. Down the grand hall were large stained glass windows with many animals on them, most notably a lion and a lamb each on their own pane. Peering through the glass, I realized that I was walking past the pool. Behind the wall on the right must be the kitchen. I walked a little farther, just past the pool, the hallway widened. To the left was a large ballroom; to the right was an entrance to the kitchen. Up ahead were stairs, a large door with a lion on it, and a door that was wrought iron with some decorative design. I walked over to the lion door, it was another bedroom if I had my guess. But before I opened it, I turned to look at the iron door. It looked terribly familiar.

  There was a small doorbell next to it. I pressed it and the door sprang open. An elevator! No, it was the elevator. The one from my dream. I stood there frozen. I couldn’t decide if I should go in the Lion room or go in the elevator, and suddenly, the door shut.

  Lion room it is.

  I swung open the door and, immediately, I recognized everything. The lions on the headboard, lions on the wardrobe. The crimson sheets peeking out from the white ruffled comforter. This was the master bedroom. I opened the wardrobe, expecting the dress to be hanging there. But it was empty. There were no gargoyles in this room. How had I dreamt this?

  I simply couldn’t make sense of any of it. I left the room in disgust. Had I toured the house that first time I was here? The strange floaty feeling like I drunk too much champagne fluttered in my belly. I walked back down the great hall, the colored sunlight floating on the floor, Lambs and Lions gleaming on the wall from the stained-glass pictures. Annabelle and Tony were giggling, so I went to check them. They were sitting with all their toys spread out across the room. But in their hands, they held a picture.

  “What is that?” I asked, staring at them.

  “I found it! I found it in the drawers.” Annabelle waved it at me like a flag.

  I snatched it away and stared. There was a picture of the two children I had seen watching the chef. The children both looked very somber in this picture. They sat together on the end of the bed, the lamb peeking out on the headboard behind them. Their hands were clasped together. They even looked a little bit frightened. The girl was trying to smile, and the boy looked fierce. I checked the back for any notes. There was a drawing of the lamb and right next to it was written “Faith, Innocence, and Resolute Spirit.”

  Beneath the lamb was scrawled in red ink; “They didn’t stand a chance.”

  8

  Maybe if I had somewhere to go, I would have run. Taken my two small children who looked a bit younger than the ones in the photos and run away. Those children looked so creepily like mine, just a wink or two older, except my children didn’t look afraid.

  Those children did.

  Instead of feeling spurred to leave, I felt this intense desire to hunt for more pictures. Tony asked me if he could have lunch and somehow, I mistakenly left the photogr
aph in their Lamb room when we exited. It seemed these days I was too distracted. I had wanted to compare it to the picture in the kitchen. How much older had they made it? Last known rang in my ears.

  It was a disturbing, rather morbid thought that I tried to press from my mind as I sliced the zucchini and fried it with no salt or butter.

  I had this sudden, intense moment of missing my husband. The zucchini sizzled and its smell should have brightened my mood, but instead, my eyes threatened to leak. This job was too big for me. This house. I wished I could call him. I would have to hitch that old mare to the cart and have her drag us to somewhere with a phone. Maybe to a payphone or to beg for one in a grocery store. Or perhaps I could just ask a neighbor. I had never done it though, I had never asked to use any phone from anyone. I would rather have begged for food, but I would never do that either.

  The only time, in fact, I recalled calling Husband in the last several years was when Tony had fallen and broken his arm. I had taken him to the doctor (not the ER; we couldn’t possibly afford that) and the doctor handed me a phone and asked me to call my husband. He had been working at that dumb car shop for so long, I should have had the number memorized. I didn’t, but had it written down in my purse. The note said, “Husband’s number” and then the obligatory digits.